School Board 6: Dave Chauncey Bio, Questionnaire

Thursday

Dave Chauncey is a former Duval County teacher at Ribault Middle School, an attorney focusing on education law, and the director of a mentorship program for Duval students.

Chauncey is passionate about education and its ability to empower and provide opportunity for every student. He has seen this truth in his own life as a born and raised Floridian who is the product of public schools.

Due to his experiences, Dave was motivated to contribute to the education of students in one of our community’s highest need schools after graduating from the University of Florida. Dave worked as a teacher at Jean Ribault Middle School as a social studies teacher and taught 6th grade, 7th grade, and 8th grade during his tenure. As part of a hard-working team of teachers, he contributed to moving Jean Ribault Middle School from an F grade to a C grade in his first-year teaching.

Chauncey also helped organize the Learn2Earn Program with the City of Jacksonville, which gave prospective first-generation college the opportunity to have a week-long college experience on the campuses of Jacksonville University and the University of North Florida to help acclimate to the expectations of college life.

After returning to his own education and graduating from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, Dave now uses his teaching experience to inform his education law practice advising K-12 institutions, colleges, and universities throughout the State of Florida as counsel on a range of issues. He also specializes in labor and employment issues.

Recently, Dave was named a 2018 “Super Lawyers Rising Star” for his work at the law firm Alexander DeGance Barnett PA.

Dave currently leads the Jacksonville Bar Association’s Ribault High School Future Lawyers Mentorship Program. The program provides thirty students a mentor and training to conduct a mock trial at the Federal Courthouse in partnership with the Jacksonville Public Education Fund and the D.W. Perkins Bar Association. Dave is married to his beautiful wife Lauren, a former Duval County Teacher of the Year finalist, and lives in Riverside.

CHAUNCEY QUESTIONNAIRE

What is your major accomplishment in public life?

Being on the team of teachers whose leadership and dedication helped the students at Ribault Middle School make a radical improvement from an F to a C in 2010 was a significant accomplishment of which I am proud. A close second is the Ribault Future Lawyers Program I oversee through the Jacksonville Bar Association, in partnership with the DW Perkins Bar and the Jacksonville Public Education Fund.

The program paired 30 students, this past year, with a mentor in the legal community and offered them training to conduct a mock trial at the federal courthouse. In an effort to plant seeds for the future and exposure to educational and professional opportunities, we also take our student-leaders on field trips across the city, including tours of places like the Duval County Courthouse, the University of North Florida and Jacksonville University. We are focused on recruiting mentors and improving the program as it grows.

Have you ever been sued, arrested or filed for bankruptcy? No.

1. What’s the first and last item you would cut to deal with the school district’s budget deficit?

Balancing budgets and using tax dollars wisely has to be a priority for any school board member. Duval County Public Schools has the largest annual budget of any governmental body in North Florida at $1.7 billion. We cannot continue to run deficits like we have the past two fiscal years, and in order to avoid overspending, difficult and prudent decisions must be made.

The first thing I would target for reductions is district-level administrators, understanding we should direct as many taxpayer dollars to the classroom as possible. The last thing I would consider cutting is classroom teacher positions or any funds directly impacting students in the classroom.

2. What would you do to make schools safer that is cost-effective?

Providing a safe, structured, and orderly environment in our schools is our first task so we have an environment where students can learn and achieve. I would partner with law enforcement and security experts to create effective plans to harden schools and create a deterrence to any potential intruder, including designating secure entry and exit points on all campuses.

The district should be hiring the best DCPS Police Officers, who can engage with students and are proactive in keeping school buildings safe. We need comprehensive protocols in place to ensure any report regarding a student’s mental health made to a police officer, teacher or district official is documented, fully vetted and handled immediately, not overlooked, like what happened in Parkland.

We must also offer specialized training for administration, school officers, and guidance counselors to better-identify and treat mental health issues in students long before they result in a catastrophic outcome. It is clear that any students who have taken the lives of classmates in acts of violence had consistent patterns of concerning behaviors that were known to those around them but not addressed by adults in the public schools. I am committed to ensuring that does not happen in Duval County.

3. What is your solution to schools that are half-empty?

We should start by addressing the reason we have half-empty schools in the first place, and that’s a systemic lack of confidence in local public schools. A growing number of Jacksonville parents are instead opting for nonpublic choices or public schools in neighboring counties.

To elaborate, a staggering 16.5 percent of Duval’s school-aged children are enrolled in private school. This is one of the highest rates in Florida and far exceeds the 11 percent state average. In fact, more total students attend private school in Duval than in significantly larger counties, such as Palm Beach and Hillsborough.

Another way parents are opting out of public education is home schooling. According to a 2017 Florida Department of Education report, nearly 6,800 students living in Duval County are home-schooled. This is the highest home school enrollment figure in the state, even eclipsing behemoth Miami-Dade County, a district serving nearly three times as many students as Duval.

The 30,000 children in home or private schools does not include the many more thousands of children whose parents work in Duval County but live elsewhere, signifying their parents’ preference for neighboring school systems. As Florida nets 1,000 new residents per day and Northeast Florida adds tens of thousands of residents every year, it’s alarming to see Duval County Public Schools’ enrollment remain flat. Meanwhile, bordering counties have seen double-digit enrollment increases over the last five years.

Commuters who would otherwise live in Jacksonville but move outside of Duval County strictly over public education concerns mean both the city and Duval County Public Schools miss out on tens of millions in property tax revenue and per-pupil funding from the state, respectively, every year. In my view, this is one of the greatest economic tragedies facing Jacksonville.

We can remedy this by adding new, attractive options and educational settings so that more Duval parents would choose our schools. In recent years, we have done a good job of offering parents more quality choices, but there is still much more to be done. We cannot maintain the status quo and expect improvement; we have to be innovative. As such, we need to provide more programs within schools, such as blended vocational education, that provides parents and students additional options that lead to high-paying, meaningful careers and little to no student loan debt for our graduates.

Second, in areas that it makes economic sense, we need to consider consolidating under-utilized campuses to ensure we are serving students the most efficiently and effectively.

4. Do you support or oppose Teach for America?

I support Teach for America (TFA) and its mission of placing talented, passionate public servants into high-needs schools and classrooms. We have a teacher shortage across the country and especially in the state of Florida. Traditional colleges of education throughout our State University System are experiencing enrollment declines. As a result, innovative solutions are needed to create new pipelines of talent for the teaching profession. TFA is one tool in a toolbox of many ways to confront that shortage. It is also an asset most other peer cities in Florida do not have. The challenges of recruiting new teacher and administration pipelines will not go away.

5. Should the school board be meeting as often and as long as it does?

No. School Board meetings should be efficient and considerate of working parents and families’ schedules. They should empower the superintendent, and meetings should be advertised in a way that engages the public to participate and notifies the public of meeting dates and times with ample notice.

The School Board should not micromanage the superintendent; rather, it should empower the superintendent. Unnecessary meetings do not help move the district forward. The School Board should fulfill its governance duties in approving or disapproving of high-level strategic policy, performing its statutorily-assigned duties, and providing financial and general oversight to the superintendent. The board, much like any other public or private board, sets performance standards for its chief executive in the superintendent, assesses her performance and holds her accountable for agreed-upon deliverables.

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